You know, sometimes all this night-bus-catching, backpack-lugging, Lonely-Planet-reading business gets a bit exhausting, and it's nice to find a bolthole to call your own for a few days to allow the hiking boots time to breathe. And so, having survived the Inca Trail (and the train back to Cusco, which derailed....) Marge and I decided to lay low in Cusco and relax in an Incan touristy style.
The first thing that strikes you about Cusco is how suspiciously easy everything is made for gringos like us. Restaurants are ten a penny, Oirish pubs are at every corner and you wander around with a sneaky feeling that the real Cusquena´s have to be living somewhere else.
That´s not to say they´re absent. Every second person is trying to squeeze a penny or two out of you. Hundreds of teenage boys run around the city with little shoeshine boxes asking do you need a polish - and they're more than willing to tell you that your flipflops or hiking boots could do with their tender ministrations. If they´re too young for shoeshining, they sell postcards...always from a funny looking cardboard box, and always quick with a quip if you try to ignore them.
"Don't you recognise me? I´m Elvis"
"I also take Visa, no problem"
And like any well trained sales person, if you bother saying you don't want any, they always give you a quick fire "why not?".
Anyone older than 21 seems to be handed a folio full of "authentic" Peruvian artwork that they will flash at you in a slightly seedy way if you happen to make eye contact with them. They´re only one step short of giving you the nudge nudge wink wink movement as they unveil a print of Matthew Pinchyou and whisper "only one sole, you like?".
And don't think for a second that the local women sit around filing their nails and soaking up the Andean sun. They can be divided into two firm camps, the weaving saleswomen and the massage pimps. Those ladies upon whom gravity has yet to exert too firm a hand stand at every corner and outside every shop handing out leaflets and asking you in a risque voice "massage? you like massage?". I still swear blind that I was offered a "sexy massage" one day I´d shaken off the gals for a few minutes at around 10 in the morning. Marge says I´m a perv who´s imagining things. She´s probably right too.
Older ladies tend to wander around holding either bunches of woven belts (shaken at you as you walk along), strange roundy-looking carved balls (again, shaken at you as you walk along) or sinisiter looking woven voodoo-like dolls. I´m not sure if they shake these at people as I would usually cross the road when I met them. They scared me. More than a little.
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Cusco was, as any self respecting Wikipedia-r will know, was once the capital of the Incan empire, and of course was royally shat upon by the Spanish colonialists when they waltzed into town with their fancy moustaches. You have this odd feeling as you walk around celebrating the wonderful colonial architecture that really, it shouldn´t be there and you shouldn´t be enjoying it. I mean, it sort of stinks - all of these 16th century churches that were built with Incan slaves and financed with the gold swiped from Incan temples. But then a delicious realisation hits you....Cusco is built on a huge fault line and the earthquakes of the last four centuries have repeatedly ripped down some of the more fabulous colonial buildings. Except for those that were actually built on Incan foundations.
The Incans twigged the whole 'lateral force dispersal' crapology that the Spaniards didn't, and their buildings could be turned upside down and shaken for several days before they'd crumble. So peaking up from the ground at every turn in Cusco are these immense Incan stone fortifications, and it´s such a pleasure to walk through the city looking at these incredibly worked walls supporting churches, houses and Oirish pubs. You have to hand it to them - crap at inventing the wheel/smelting iron/figuring out that men with moustaches can't be trusted, but absolutely the right men to have around when you´re building a city.
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Anyway, Marge and I checked back into Cusco with a reservation at the strangest hostel we've yet to stay in. Basically, it's attached to a convent school and is run by nuns. There, I´ve said it...nuns. But imagine what a respite from the grimy world of backpacking this haven was. As everyone knows (and if you don´t you should) nuns are world class at running hospitals and at making you feel like you're staying at your Granny´s. So picture spotlessly clean rooms, total silence, and more cheek pinching than a man of 33 could reasonably expect. It all seemed perfect until the morning after we checked in.
Nuns, as you´ll know from watching the Sound of Music, love to sing. And sing their hearts out early in the morning with twangy guitars at school assembly. At 730am. Every morning. I honestly thought that I was having a nightmare as I was woken up by a crazy Sister Act hopeful singing her heart out over the schools PA system and being accompanied by 300 schoolchildren. This was most definitely not in the brochure.
Funny that they´d leave that kind of thing out don´t you think?
And so after a day or two of early morning starts, Marge, Gillian and I hopped on a bus and took off to Arequipa.....where we hoped that sleep (and the Colca Canyon) awaited us.
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